Understanding Customer Churn

There are many posts out there that tell you how to calculate your churn rate, but not all are easy to understand or execute.

To calculate customer churn, take all the customers you lose during a specific span of time then divide it by your total number of customers you had at the beginning of the time period. (Do not add in new sales.)

This is how to calculate your churn rate, but the question that still remains is how do you decrease your churn rate? I believe content can help greatly. Here are four ways we’ve used content to bring down our churn rate.

1. Communicate Using Real-time Dynamic Messaging

Real-time dynamic messaging is when a specific user action triggers a personalized prompt the user will see in the moment they meet the criteria of the trigger - it can be in-app or on site.

In-context dynamic messaging is one way to be more effective with customer communication. You can tailor specific messages to show up for certain customers based on their interactions with the site.

It’s also a great way to offer proactive customer service. Predicting the problems your customers might face and addressing them through this kind of messaging can create happier users - this will lead to greater loyalty and more business.

You need to “just be there” for your customers - make sure it’s easy for your customers to talk to you by offering them forums, surveys, or even quick access to the right person’s email address. Little things like this can make all the difference when you’re trying to improve your churn rate.

2. Stop Being So Salesy - Offer Blog Posts and eBooks

If you want to annoy your users and customers, try and force a sales pitch down their throats. Spend less time developing sales pitches and spend more time putting out engaging content.

If you want to focus on creating content, the most common forms are blog posts and eBooks. Whenever you are trying to figure out what to write about, the best place to start is with best practices that you see from your customers.

This will give you plenty of content to point customers to to learn from and put into practice right away to help them be more successful.

Blogs and ebooks are especially valuable outlets for this kind of content as you get the added benefit of driving inbound traffic and leads.

3. Use Forums and FAQs To Help Customers Help Themselves

Customers love to help themselves - they want to solve their own problems and learn more about your product.